The southern Israeli city of Netivot, a working-class rabbinical stronghold about 10 miles from the Gaza border, escaped the worst of the Hamas-led attack on October 7, an accident that many residents attribute to the miraculous intervention of Jewish sages buried there.
However, many here seem to pay little attention to the ongoing suffering of Palestinian civilians on the other side of the fence in the Gaza Strip – their de facto neighbours.
Michael Zigdon, who runs a small grocery shop in Netivot's dilapidated market and employed two Gazan men until the attack, had little sympathy for the Gazans who have endured a ferocious Israeli assault for the past eight months.
“Who wants this war and who doesn't?” Mr. Zigdon said, wiping up red food coloring that had spilled from the crushed-ice drink machine in his shed. “We weren't the ones that attacked them on October 7th.”
Like many Israelis, Zigdon accused Hamas of endangering Gaza's civilians by hiding out in residential areas, but he himself blurred the distinction between Hamas fighters and ordinary residents, as if they were all accomplices.
Israelis continue to be traumatized by the events of October 7, when Hamas-led militants swarmed across the border, killing about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and driving about 250 more back into Gaza, according to Israeli officials. It was the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust.
The still-raw pain is increasingly being overshadowed by anger: With Israel facing international condemnation for its war efforts and the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, much of the Israeli collective psyche is locked in a layer of defensive resentment.
Many Israelis seem to be aware that their military's subsequent air and ground attacks on Gaza have killed tens of thousands of Palestinians (many of them children, according to Gaza health officials) and caused widespread destruction in the coastal areas. But they have also watched videos of dozens of people in civilian clothes looting and attacking residents of Israeli rural villages during Hamas raids. While Palestinian opinion polls show widespread support for the October 7 attacks among Gaza residents, some Palestinians have spoken out against the atrocities committed by Hamas and its allies that day.
Netivot is a stronghold of political and religious conservatism. In the November 2022 elections, about 92% of the city's votes went to parties that make up Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's hardline government. Gaza militants have fired a barrage of rockets at the city for years. On October 7, a rocket struck Netivot, killing a 12-year-old boy, his father and grandfather.
But the lack of sympathy for the plight of Gaza people extends beyond Israel's traditional right-wing strongholds. Rachel Reimer, 72, a longtime resident of Urim, a liberal, left-leaning kibbutz about 10 miles south of Netivot and about the same distance from the Gaza border, recalled donating money to buy blankets for Gaza children during earlier fighting.
“This time, I don't have the space in my heart to sympathize with them,” she said of Gaza's civilians. “I know there is a lot to sympathize with. I understand it rationally. But I just can't emotionally.”
Many Israelis, conservative and liberal, accuse Hamas of starting the war and infiltrating Gaza residents with its fighters, who the military says operate in tunnels beneath schools, hospitals, mosques and Gaza homes.
Many Gazan civilians also see Hamas as at least ideologically complicit in the October 7 atrocities, saying it was they who put the group in power in the 2006 Palestinian elections in the first place and that it has shown little remorse. But Hamas has ruled Gaza since 2007, with little tolerance for any dissent, much less a new vote. As the war drags on, more Gazans are willing to risk retaliation to speak out against Hamas.
The death toll in Gaza has soared to at least 37,000 since Israel launched its fierce offensive, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between combatants and civilians.
Hamas officials deny allegations that Israel is using hospitals and other public facilities as cover for military operations, but there is evidence to the contrary. And most of Gaza's 2.3 million residents live in fear, trapped on a congested strip of land bordering the sea, which is tightly blockaded and subject to a naval blockade by Israel and Egypt, with few options for escape.
International organizations have also accused Israel of restricting the flow of aid, causing widespread starvation, while Israeli authorities say they have opened additional crossing points and blame humanitarian organizations for failing to distribute aid effectively. Most of the Gaza Strip's residents have been forced to flee, and more than half of the homes in coastal areas have been reported damaged or destroyed.
For many Israelis, this war is very different from past Arab-Israeli conflicts, said Tel Aviv-based Israeli historian Avi Shiron, explaining the apparent indifference to Palestinian suffering. Unlike the much shorter wars of 1967 and 1973, which pitted national armies against one another, the current conflict is viewed through the prism of the 1948 war over the creation of the modern state of Israel, or the Nazi genocide in Europe, he said.
Shiron said he considers every unintended death a “tragedy,” but he said the Oct. 7 attack — in which attackers killed people in their homes, at a music rave, in a roadside bunker and at a military base — was widely seen in Israel as “solely motivated to kill Jews” and that the ensuing war had become a raw “us or them” battle.
Ronnie Baruch, 67, a potato farmer from Urim who escaped the brunt of the October 7 attack, said the humanitarian crisis in Gaza was “horrible” and “pathetic” and that it was time to end the war. But he said he did not believe his opinion was representative, and stressed that Israel was not the “bad guy” in the conflict.
Many Israelis remain in a dark place. Hebrew-language news media remains awash with stories of loss and courage from the Oct. 7 tragedy. They have seen the brutal video clips of the Oct. 7 atrocities filmed by Hamas militants, as well as the hostage videos released by the militants.
Several survivors said that some of the intruders were Gazans they had previously hired. Video footage showed crowds jeering and taunting the hostages as they were paraded through the Gaza Strip on October 7. The rescue of the four hostages on June 8 came after months of reports that some had been killed in captivity and that the military had retrieved their bodies for burial in Israel. Israel generally paid little attention to the high number of deaths suffered by its Gaza counterparts during the rescue operation. Gaza health authorities reported that more than 270 people, including children, had died.
Although Israel's mainstream media rarely focuses on the suffering of Gaza's civilians, with news programs typically featuring funerals and profiles of soldiers killed in battle, one poll this year found that 87 percent of Jewish Israelis said they had seen at least some photos or videos of the destruction in Gaza.
Israelis are divided broadly along political lines, and sometimes internally, over issues such as the delivery of humanitarian aid.
“I have mixed feelings,” said Urim resident Sarah Bryan, 42. “On the one hand, as a country we have an obligation to uphold international treaties. On the other hand, we get nothing in return. Have any trusted organisations seen any of the hostages? Who is looking after them?” The International Committee of the Red Cross said it had not been able to see the hostages.
Israelis acknowledge the hunger in Gaza but accuse Hamas of stealing and embezzling aid. Hamas officials deny stealing aid and say a few desperate people looted deliveries. Many Israelis have seen footage of starving Gazans crowding into aid trucks. But many say they were angered by footage of Gazans flocking to the beach to rest while the hostages were held in ignorance.
And some Israelis say that after October 7, the rest of the world changed its behavior too quickly.
“The impression for the world is that the story began on Oct. 8,” said Tamar Helman, a professor of political science and public opinion expert at the Israel Democracy Institute, a nonpartisan research group in Jerusalem. “Not only are Gazans showing no remorse, but people feel that the world is downplaying Israel's suffering.”
At the same time, there is little desire in Israel to see children in Gaza starve to death.
“We don't have the energy for that,” said Hen Kelman, 32, from the southern city of Beersheba.
Kelman, who works for a private detective agency, and his partner, taxi driver Rani Kelman, 32, had come to Netivot to pray at the tomb of a revered sage known as Baba Sari. The pair describe themselves as right-wing extremists.
But like many Israelis, they seem to have few illusions about the progress of the war since Prime Minister Netanyahu and his right-wing government vowed eight months ago to eradicate Hamas.
“The soldiers are dead and Hamas is still there,” Kelman said.
Some, like Kelman, believe Israeli forces should bring more destruction to the Gaza Strip, while others say Israel should agree to a deal to bring the hostages home at all costs and focus on planning a withdrawal.
Tali Medina, 52, runs a dairy farm in Urim after her husband, Haim, was shot and wounded on October 7 while they were cycling with friends.
“I didn't start this war, and I didn't hold the hostages for more than 200 days,” said Medina, wearing a T-shirt bearing the logo of Brothers in Arms, an anti-government protest group led by reservists. She opposes the hardline Israeli government but, like most Israelis, holds Hamas responsible for the war.
“The reality is very harsh, but it's not my fault,” she said.